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George & Ira Gershwin

So. It’s a picture perfect autumn day and we are listening to Terry Gross on Fresh Air talk with Michael Feinstein describing his new book/cd about Ira Gershwin. Great program. They play a clip of a radio show in 1933 with Rudy Vallee and George Gershwin chatting with a little piano playing, followed a little later by a second clip of Ethel Merman singing “I Got Rhythm.” Our boy has been next to me in the car the entire time, tapping away on his iPod and soaking up the October sun; it’s been a long day of doctor’s appointments. The Merman recording, Feinstein explains, is from a tribute to George Gershwin that took place just after his death from a brain rumor at age 38. As Merman approaches the bridge in the song – “Who could ask for anything more?” – the boy turns to me and asks,

“I think so!” I reply, but when I get home I look it up because I wasn’t listening that closely. He was right. It was 1937. Oz was released in 1939. The Fresh Air broadcast made no reference to that film or its music but only (and ever so tangentially) to the composers who wrote some of the songs for it – Harold Arlen and Yip Harburg. The only other clues to the era might have been the melodies themselves and the accents – the Brooklyn/Boston/vaudeville kind of patter – both Gershwin and Vallee have voices that sound very much like Ray Bolger, who played the Scarecrow in Oz.

How is it – how is it – that some one who is not supposed to be adept at inferring anything can infer himself right back to 1937 at the sound of a radio broadcast and a familiar accent? Auditory processing deficit? Not today. Fear of music? Not today. Trouble making connections? Not today – at least not at this moment.

During the course of this busy day I jotted down at least a half-dozen moments that are worth writing about, but this is the stunner because it reminds me for the umpteenth time that , in our lives, autism creates so many more opportunities than we give it credit for. They are random, yes, and we don’t always know what to do with them, but they’re there, waiting to be noticed, valued and put into context. It’s kind of like a treasure hunt, every day.